Brant's Crockpot Carnitas


My attempt at a Mexican dish I miss out here in TN

Now that we're living out in TN - far away from a Chipotle or the wonderful Taqueria in LB and even far enough away from Costco that we can't get theirs either - we miss Carnitas. For those who don't know (shame on you), Carnitas are a slow cooked, pulled pork dish, that are common in Mexican restaurants (but also common to lots of Latin cuisine). We haven't really tried many Mexican restaurants out here, but most don't strike me as havens of great Carnitas. However, we do have Garden Mountain Farm out here, and they have lots of happy pigs raised organically and locally and not in a tiny little box (while I obviously have no qualms about eating animals, I don't think that means we need to mistreat them in the process - so I really like buying from a farm that treats them well).

So when you are stuck and you can't get it elsewhere, you give it a shot on your own. I'll preface this by saying that I am no chef, but we liked the way these turned out. I've basically culled a bunch of different recipes together from online sources, and picked up the things I liked about each. If you see ways of improving this, by all means speak up in the comments section.

4.5 lb pork shoulder roast
1 Lemon (juice and zest)
1 Lime (juice and zest)
2 Tablespoons ground cumin
salt
pepper
5-6 BIG tablespooons of chopped garlic (fresh stuff would be better, but with the chopped stuff I just go overboard)
1 qt Chicken Broth

Put all of the lemon/lime juice and zest in the crockpot and drop the pork right on top. Salt and pepper the top of the roast and then cover with the first T of cumin. Flip the roast over, salt and pepper that side, then cover it with the cumin. Dump all the garlic on top of the pork and then pour the chicken broth over the top.

Turn the crockpot on High for 30 min. Flip the roast over, and leave on High for another 30 min. Drop the crockpot to low and let the roast sit in there for another 7-8 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pull the whole roast out (discard the liquid) and put it in a pyrex dish. Shred the roast with two forks. Put dish in the oven for about 15 min or so, just to crisp up the pork a bit.

Throw it in some tortillas with all the normal fixins and enjoy! Another great option is to fry some tortillas to make your own taco shells. Just heat some oil nice and hot, fold the tortilla over and hold it under the oil until it bubbles up and turns into a nice taco shell. For my fellow low-carb types, Mission has a line of low carb tortillas that are pretty good. This whole dish is pretty low carb, so as long as you use the low carb tortillas and watch what else you put on the taco/burrito, you should be good to go.

Posted: Mon - September 10, 2007 at 11:52 AM | | | | | | |

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